J-20 Pictures From the Zhuhai Air Show

They still look gorgeous.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: BigDave-AR

The rear bump I circled in fugly yellow *IS* an EO sensor.

No word on what the front two are.

I don’t see said fugly yellow circle?

a reply to: BigDave-AR

Previous picture, Dave:



Towards the rear, parallel to the pod.

The Chinese forums (elsewhere) have said the pod is a reflector and the other bumps are something unknown. Considering they were not present in other photos, I'm skeptical. However, the EO sensor was present.

a reply to: anzha

It's roughly the same shape, size, and location as one of the F-22 RTE's. Good money says it's an RTE.

Clear frontal view.

a reply to: grey580


Because the F-35 would be grounded?

Non afterburning engines
Unable to complete full loop
Boring display
Massive turning circle

It may be an interceptor but I don’t recon it will get high too fast and wonder what kind of electrical power those engines can produce.

a reply to: Salander

As far as they knew.

Loving all the footage coming out, they pulled some tight maneuvers.






Some great shots coming out.

Clearly someone at the design bureau is a big “Firefox” fan...

c1.staticflickr.com...

I tried to upload this, but ATS feels its too big. Alas.

However, look at how the bay doors open.

Interesting, huh?

Ooohhh lawn darts Air to Air?

a reply to: anzha

The folks at Lockheed must feel so flattered

a reply to: Barnalby

No cookie for you.

As pointed out in pm, the missiles in the smaller bay come out and the bay closes behind it before firing. Is that an attempt at faster signature recovery?

As and ye shall receive:



That was posted by someone in the sinonet.

Was this new to you? It probably has less signature benefit than you think (yet better than an open bay) but definitely helps smoothen the airflow on release. Also keeps any nasty outgassing damage to an easily replaceable external panel.

The big thing here is it indicates the J-20/PL-10 probably doesn't have a LOAL capability. They need to expose the seeker head to get a tone and lock. If you have to do that, then this makes a lot of sense. The bay doors are going to be open (with drag and signature penalties) for longer than a split second cycle time while the seeker head acquires the target.

The F-22 can feed the information to the AIM-9X, open the door, release, close the door, bing-bang-boom. It doesn't have to let the missile hang out while it acquires the target before launch. I don't have an official cycle time, but if you've seen it, it cycles very quickly.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Was this new to you?

I had thought they had mounted them on the outside for merely display purposes.

a reply to: anzha

I wasn't trying to be a jerk, but there was a lot of talk about this novel approach several years ago. Just surprised you'd missed it.

a reply to: anzha

Oof, I saw that and didn't even think anything of it. I wonder if the AIM-9s larger control surfaces precluded that sort of thing from being feasible on the F-22.

That, or I wonder if the Chinese missile needs long enough to get a lock compared to the AIM-9 that they needed something like this to keep from having the door open for 10+ seconds.

EDIT: RadioRobert beat me to it and I'm an idiot for not reading his post.

a reply to: anzha

It's very cool.looking I have to give them that

But I would love to see side and read radar data on it. My guess is very noisy

From the front it is probably pretty good, but let's be real if the US and China get into an all out A2A shooting match most shots will be BUT for the Americans atleast, and that not even taking middle trucks linked to other platforms.

I highly doubt they would be there would be allot of dog fighting, it would be so short with the 9d's off boresight capabilities.

I imagine in a shooting war we would use some high fliers or sats to target the Chinese jets and unload a ton of missiles from a cargo of bomber aircraft and clean the rest up with fighters mostly still in BVR.

I could be super wrong, China might have a few tricks up their sleaves , but we already know their best ones because they took them from us